-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- Drew ushered Jackie into a bedroom , shutting the door behind them . The room was pitch-black inside . Jackie blindly turned toward Drew , uttering his name . At that same moment , she says , she detected movement in the room -- and felt someone bump into her . Jackie began to scream .

-- `` A Rape on Campus , '' Rolling Stone

The above scene is just the beginning . In the paragraphs that follow , writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely gives excruciatingly painful details of what allegedly happened to Jackie , a freshman at the University of Virginia , over the course of the next three hours as she was allegedly gang-raped by members of Drew 's fraternity . `` Grab its motherf *** ing leg , '' one guy in the crowd said . `` Its . '' Jackie was dehumanized in every sense imaginable .

According to Rolling Stone , after a classmate penetrated Jackie with a beer bottle , she passed out . She woke up at 3 a.m. , alone , her face beaten , her dress torn and spattered with blood . Going barefoot down the stairs , past the frat party still in full swing , Jackie left the building and called her friends . And this , if you can imagine it , is where the story gets worse .

Opinion : Punish rapists , not fraternities

The article continues : Jackie 's friends , two guys and one woman , ultimately decided she should n't be taken to the hospital or report the rape because if she did , `` her reputation will be shot for the next four years . '' Jackie 's female friend insisted , `` She 's gon na be the girl who cried ` rape , ' and we 'll never be allowed into any frat party again . ''

This reaction is fairly unique to rape as compared with other crimes . After all , if someone is mugged or murdered , such crimes are generally reported to the police . For instance , the federal government estimates that 65 % of rape or sexual assault cases are unreported , while 17 % of car thefts are unreported .

On the day the Rolling Stone article about Jackie 's alleged rape was published , Caitlin Kelly , a Web producer at The New Yorker , wrote a string of tweets imagining what it would look like if people responded to her wallet being stolen the way they respond to rape . '' ' I think that guy I know stole my wallet , ' '' Kelly tweeted , followed by the hypothetical responses :

`` Well , do you have proof ? Were you drinking that night ? What were you wearing when this happened ? ''

`` Are you sure that you did n't just GIVE him your wallet , and now you 're embarrassed about it ? Maybe there was just some miscommunication . ''

`` Have you lost wallets before ? Just curious , just trying to get a better sense of what 's going on here . He has such a bright future . ''

`` Nobody is going to want to hang out with the girl who cried stolen wallet . You should really think hard about what you 're saying here . ''

`` All guys want wallets , it 's just in their nature . Maybe you should n't have had a wallet in the first place . ''

Kelly told The Huffington Post that her motivation for the tweets was `` seeing so many people doubt victims , almost as a reflex , in ways that people who are victims -LRB- of -RRB- other crimes rarely seem to face . ''

The shaming of rape victims is especially stark in contrast to the attitude of nonchalance or even boastfulness used by rapists . In the Rolling Stone article , Jackie describes how she ran into Drew -LRB- not his real name -RRB- during her lifeguard shift at a UVA pool , just two weeks after her alleged rape . '' ' I wanted to thank you for the other night , ' Drew said . ' I had a great time . ' '' Could you imagine Drew parading around like nothing had happened if he 'd just committed a murder ?

Jackie reported her rape , plus two other similar gang rapes she learned about at the same Phi Kappa Psi fraternity , to Dean Nicole Eramo , head of UVA 's Sexual Misconduct Board . Eramo told Jackie she could file a report with the police and that the university would support her if she did so , though the university did not exactly encourage her to report the crime . Jackie still has not filed a criminal or civil suit . It was not until Rolling Stone started poking around and asking questions about the rape allegations that the university began to investigate the matter .

Opinion : UVA 's answer to rape allegations a farce

Meanwhile Jackie , once a promising student engaged in all sorts of extracurricular activities of campus life , was abandoned by her friends , became depressed , and at one point , suicidal , the article said . She slept for days on end and fell behind in her studies . On the other hand , Drew , as of the writing of the Rolling Stone article , was set to graduate , entirely untarnished -- as were the other men involved in the alleged rape .

`` Rapists make us less uncomfortable than rape victims , '' Roxanne Gay recently wrote in The Guardian . `` Predators demand so much less than victims ; they are n't as inconvenient . They do n't bleed or hurt or reveal their gaping wounds . If we do n't doubt them , we do not have to doubt ourselves . ''

Murder and robbery , after all , are obviously aberrant and therefore easy to call out . But rape ? Rape is so horribly common that talking about it , exploring why it happens , investigating the culture and context of it , would seem to indict every aspect of a school like the University of Virginia that apparently has not done enough to address the problem .

When will we come to terms with our naive illusions about what goes on in places like UVA and at frat parties in every corner of America ? If we do n't grapple with that reality , more young women will be destroyed .

Will Drew and UVA get off easily while Jackie 's life -- and other college women like her -- is shattered ?

If UVA has any sense of moral rightness and wishes to remain a great university , it should conduct a thorough investigation into these and similar allegations and mete out appropriate punishment for the perpetuators . Universities everywhere should take serious steps to address sexual assault on campuses rather than trying to cover them up .

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Rolling Stone says a freshman , Jackie , was allegedly gang-raped by members of a fraternity

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Sally Kohn : When it comes to rape , there is so much shaming of the victim in our society

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She asks if a person reports murder or robbery , she will likely be believed , so why not rape ?

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Kohn : UVA , and other colleges , should take rape allegations seriously and investigate